Builders make Lubbock home for three-month project_60203

Posted: 5/30/03

Builders make Lubbock
home for three-month project

By Ken Camp

Texas Baptist Communications

LUBBOCK–Texas Baptist Men Retiree Builders expected high winds and rising temperatures when they agreed to tackle a construction project on the South Plains in late spring and early summer. But nobody told them to be ready for the mercury to drop 55 degrees in less than two days.

“Welcome to West Texas,” one of the builders quipped.

When temperatures plummeted from 103 to 48 degrees, volunteers bundled up in layers of any available clothes–a hodgepodge assortment of sweatshirts, flannel shirts, overalls and windbreakers. And they kept working to erect the framework for the new Living and Learning Center of My Father's House Lubbock.

“These are the most amazing people I've ever seen,” said Shirley Madden, executive director and founder of My Father's House Lubbock.

My Father's House currently operates at Iglesia Bautista Templo in Lubbock, offering Christian Women's Job Corps training. That ministry, originated and sponsored by Woman's Missionary Union, teaches job skills and life skills to low-income women. Texas Baptists help support Christian Women's Job Corps through gifts to the Mary Hill Davis Offering for Texas missions.

The Living and Learning Center–being built on 4.29 donated acres of prime real estate–will add a residential component to the Christian Women's Job Corps model. The center will include 18 two-bedroom apartments, classrooms, a commercial kitchen and day care and laundry facilities where women can gain hands-on job experience.

The Meadows Foundation recently approved a $250,000 grant for the building project, and another Texas-based foundation provided a $150,000 no-interest loan based on pledges made to the project. When My Father's House has $500,000 cash in hand, it will be eligible for a matching grant from the Mabee Foundation, Madden said.

Volunteers from each of the Texas Baptist Men Builders groups–crews who specialize in building churches, camps, furniture or cabinets–have teamed up for the Lubbock project, providing volunteer labor valued at $1.5 million.

The heavy, load-bearing steel framework for the Living and Learning Center proved a challenge for volunteers accustomed to working with wood.

“It's a lot different, but our guys are picking up on it,” said Bill Pigott of Glenview Baptist Church in Haltom City, coordinator for the building project.

Running the drill press at the Texas Baptist Men Builders furniture shop in Lubbock is 93-year-old Ed Smith of Faith Chapel Baptist Church in Brownfield.

“One thing about this bunch of guys–you name it, they can build it. And 99 percent of them wouldn't do it for the money. I know of two guys on the crew who each paid to have somebody put a roof put on his house before coming out here. They're something else.”

My Father's House Lubbock marks the 86th Texas Baptist Men volunteer building project for Chester Booth of First Baptist Church in Whitney.

“I have two brothers who are Baptist preachers, and I don't fit in that category. But building is something I can do,” said Booth, who generally serves as lead carpenter with the Texas Baptist Men Builders.

Wayne Pogue from First Baptist Church in Skellytown has worked on more than 30 projects with Texas Baptist Men Builders since joining the volunteers in 1986, usually as lead electrician on the crew.

“A friend called when the builders were at Plains Encampment. He asked if I wanted to volunteer for two or three days. That lasted a couple of weeks, and it was all it took to get me hooked. I've been working with them six or seven months a year ever since then,” he said.

“These are some of the best people I've ever been around. If I ever needed help, these are the folks I'd call on.”

To make the My Father's House Living and Learning Center a reality, 60 retired couples have turned Lubbock's Lowrey Field into a mobile home community, the athletes' field house into a sewing circle and a nearby motorboat showroom into a furniture mill for three months.

The volunteers are living in their mobile homes parked at the Lubbock Independent School District athletic facility, and local churches are serving meals for workers beneath the stadium bleachers.

While their husbands work either on the construction site or at a makeshift furniture factory down the road, wives sew curtains and valances for the windows of the Living and Learning Center, in addition to other ministry projects.

Texas Tech student Andrew Halton, a member of Austin's Hyde Park Baptist Church, works alongside Texas Baptist Men Builders Gaylen Harris from Parkview Baptist Church in Mesquite and Jim Bosworth of First Baptist Church in Navasota.

The Texas Baptist Men furniture builders are crafting beds, chests and tables for the 18 apartments at the Living and Learning Center.

The eldest member of the furniture builder crew is Ed Smith, 93. Smith, a member of Faith Chapel Baptist Church in Brownfield, started working with the Texas Baptist Men Retiree Builders 25 years ago after retiring from the U.S. Air Force.

He moved from the church builders group to the furniture builders crew two years ago.

“I was looking for a better job,” he said.

So instead of climbing a ladder on a construction site, Smith spends hours a day on his feet running a drill press at the furniture mill.

“I've always loved to build,” he said. “I'd go crazy if I didn't have something to do.”

The youngest volunteer on the construction site is Andrew Halton, a business major at Texas Tech University. Halton's father at Hyde Park Baptist Church in Austin read a Baptist Standard article about the volunteer building project, and he called Pigott to ask if his son could help.

The student started work right after completing his last finals of the spring semester. Halton said he is learning not only about the construction trade from the volunteer builders, but also about Christian living.

“I'm growing in my Christian walk,” he said.

During the first three weeks in June, My Father's House Lubbock needs volunteers to put asphalt shingles on the center.

“We're looking for a team of roofers, college-age, who want to give a week or two to My Father's House Lubbock,” Madden said.

Teams will be able to sleep in the facilities of area churches, and they will have access to the showers at the Lowrey Field athletic center.

Once the Texas Baptist Men volunteers complete their work in late July, additional volunteers will be needed in August for interior finishing work and exterior bricklaying, Madden added.

Bible study classes and WMU groups at various churches also are needed to “adopt” an apartment by decorating it. “We are excited for them to do that because it will seal their heart to our ministry, and they will 'own' a piece of the Living and Learning Center,” Madden said.

Prospective volunteers may contact Pigott at (214) 707-4379 or Madden at (806) 799-0990.

Madden said it's a privilege to work with spiritual “giants” like the Texas Baptist Men Builders.

“What a witness they are to all of us. I have never known a group that more perfectly lives out the Matthew 25 life than they do,” she said, referring to Jesus' admonition about caring for the needy. “And our community is seeing it up close and personal.”

For previous stories about My Father's House Lubbock, visit the archives at www.baptiststandard.com.

Financial contributions may be made directly to My Father's House Lubbock or through the Texas Baptist Missions Foundation. Call the foundation toll-free at (800) 558-8263,